Bowser's Inside Story Review

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story - 1/1

Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story is a good game. I feel like that's all that needs to be said. It checks off nearly every box on that grand checklist of What Makes a Universally Good Game, and it does it with style.

It seems strange to me that something so niche and... ahem, "hardcore" as Demon's Souls is still being talked about today. Atlus isn't exactly a household name, and when good ol' Zelda Meets Resident Evil hit it big I was actually sort of surprised. It seemed like the death of The Hidden Gem Game. That game that gets rave review after rave review but dies on the market, or never gets brought up again outside of nostalgic love letters from thirty-somethings on 4chan. But whoa, Bowser's Inside Story. It got a slew of 10s upon release and hasn't been mentioned since, apart from a frankly shameful article on Kotaku that implied that adult's shouldn't be playing this game cause it's for children. Suck it, you goddamn kidult.

Maybe Inside Story suffered from being released around the same time as Super New Wii Bros Mario (which we've already shared our thoughts on), or maybe this stupid fucking Kotaku article shamed every person over 12 into ignoring it. If you take one thing away from this little write up it shouldn't be that Inside Story is a good game (even though it totally IS), it should be that it isn't a game for kids. It isn't even a game for adults. It is a game for goddamn everyone.

Inside Story is a game that nearly every human being on this planet should be able to pick up and just sort sort of get. It's got those traditional RPG elements and the whole active dodging and counterattacking thing the Mario RPGs are known for, but now it's honed to razor sharpness. Now you have Bowser tearing shit up on the overworld, and Mario and Luigi working behind the scenes in Bowser. Every fight is engaging and difficult, but not so much that a little practice and rhythm won't get you through. The music is scored well, the story is fantastic, funny, witty, and unexpected at every turn. Even the little voice bites that play ala Banjo Kazooie are entertaining (I dare you, any of you to not crack a smile at Fawful's 'YYYAY').

Okay that spiraled a little out of control. Let me put things in perspective and ground this a little bit. I got into this game from my older sister. This is really strange given she hasn't cared about a video game since Bomberman 64 almost ten years ago. She recently bought a DS for Mario Party with my little sister, and has been borrowing games from wherever she could (though she wasn't having no Order of Eclessia, no accounting for tastes I suppose). One day I find her absolutely engrossed and laughing along with her DS, every now and then she would groan, the telltale audible failure, and eventually her arms shot up and she let out a triumphant "YESSSSSS" alongside one of those girlish squeals I'm sure you've all heard at least once.

Sort of like this...

Getting to the point, she was playing Bowser's Inside Story. The fact that a gamer so unbelievably hardcore as myself could find the same amount of enjoyment as my sister, who can't tell the difference between a Gamecube and a Wii, should be enough for anyone to see that this game is good.

So there you have it. One out of one. The game takes you on this wonderfully cartoonish whirlwind of comedy and legitimate god-fearing compelling gameplay. Because the main story is so razor sharp though, the sidequests and optional bosses can be pretty easily dismissed, as they come down to rhythmic button-mash marathons, a single optional boss room, and grinding to the level cap. That's it! All the flaws right there!

   

More like this.

There's even a point where you find a Boo-Ray Player (if you thought that was funny, just buy the game already), and use it as a sort of X-Ray machine to navigate one of Bowser's gut dungeons. The game is just a marvel of telling a good story and allowing you to take part in the best parts of it, the action parts of it. It isn't an 80-hour RPG (though it can take a good chunk of your time), and it isn't the next blockbuster FPS (though it can demand quite a bit of reflexes). It's just...

It's just a good game.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X - one out of one

The right to be God...

Resident Evil: Code Veronica X - 1/1 - Henry Arrambide

I've always loved Capcom. I can't think of anything they've ever done which is extremely terrible; even those spin-offs and odd little experiments seem to be, if not excellent payoffs (Devil May Cry), at least fun demonstrations which aren't bad at all and never feel like a waste of time (Resident Evil Gun Survivor). Something about what Capcom does just clicks; unlike say, Square-Enix who is a little too aware that video-games are a cultural artifact and try to cash in on their fruits with twenty FF7 spinoffs, FF remakes, and talking about their own accomplishments like they were holistic video-game canon (I get it I get it! Final Fantasy has been around for 20+ years), Capcom sort of just goes with the flow - Mega Man instantly comes to mind as a corporate and cult mascot, yet we aren't constantly bombarded with reminders that the blue bomber is a gaming tradition that must be respected. Hell, thankfully he isn't a sacred cow - or else spin-offs like the Zero and Legends games wouldn't happen. Also, instead of trying to make games that imitate popular art, Capcom just borrows and sometimes damn near plagiarizes concepts - Dead Rising, Resident Evil, and Mega Man once again come to mind. Let's take Astro-boy and Blade Runner and mix in midi's inspired by 80's Rock - boom, Mega Man X is made.

Gotta admit it takes more than copy and pasting to make the idea appealing.

By doing this a few things get accomplished: (1) The game is rooted in familiar pop-culture themes and concepts, it's easier to delve into and spread among the masses Easier to understand. You don't come off like a crazy neckbeard who smells of cheetos and mountain dew - the game is *gasp* somewhat attractive and holds mass appeal. (2) The game is self aware of what it is doing, rather than trying to march around as high art it realizes it's a videogame. Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 4 work really well because they embrace over-the-top situations that can only be pulled off in video-games; any other medium wouldn't be able to maintain the suspension of disbelief. (3) Being self-aware and embracing the fact that you're a video-game, not an interactive movie or an interactive novel, along with some semblance of artistic style and themes allows games to be made that, while not extreme deep, mind-altering endeavors, are extremely well put together and fun. They work. Mega Man 5 may be the worst in my opinion of the classic series, but it still works - and for an NES game, it still has what was for it's time an excellent little story boiling with all kinds of plot twists and cut-scenes which for an NES game were quite impressive. Mega Man 5 is also an example of the "Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" mentality the company runs with. So yeah...Code Veronica.

Ratchet & Clank FUTURE: Tools of Destruction - Gilbert Lucero

Ratchet & Clank FUTURE:
Tools of Destruction
A review by: Gilbert Lucero

Genre: Shooty Platformer

Stance on Robot Equality: All for it

Favorite Real Life Lombax: Steve the Lombax

A new year brings new game consoles, and this year brought me a PlayStation 3 (PS3 – pronounced: psss 3). I firmly believe that it was not released prior to my owning it, and in fact I am hesitant to think that video games even ever existed before I got a hold of them. So this was quite a treat, to be able to play a brand new console that no one had ever played before. I can't tell you much about it right now, but I can tell you that the street dealer I bought it from threw in the required springs and crank for only an extra $1100!

This might just be a PS3!

The first game I tried on the amazingly futuristic technology that is the psss3, was Rortchet and Clink, it might have been called. I saw it on the shelves at a local rental factory, and right then my mind was sent back to older times, when I had played the psss2 Wrenchit and Clonk games. I, too, had shelves back then, you see. Seeing it sitting there on the shelf brought back foggy memories of joy and guns and more guns, and with my fantastically cutting-edge psss3, I could regain these moments of happiness.


I remember little about the older games, which was somewhat problematic. After pulling the psss3 lever and winding up the gearbox, I started the game and was immediately thrust into the Stitcher and Spronk universe and given absolutely no indication that I had. Sure, the characters are there, but you wonder why things are happening, or what anything is, and the game never really clarifies.

What even is any of this?

My psss3 clanged and buckled through cutscene after cutscene, and after each one I thought 'why is this happening' and the game metaphorically flipped me off and said 'just do it bitch'. This wasn't a welcome sentiment since it first does it literally, and with more condescending adjectives (it's a secret cutscene, you'll probably never find it). But I figured why not, so I did all the stuff, and I got all these guns to do it, so there was really no reason not to.

Speaking of guns: GUUUNS. Guns are the only important thing, and this also true in the game. There is a story, kind of, with a little bit of conflict, maybe, the platforming is fun, though not the best, and it's funny, I would say if pressed, but all of that exists for the sole reason of rationalizing GUNS. This was true of the psss2 games (probably?), and the trend continues to the astonishingly new-fangled psss3.

Guns in the game and parts of my psss3.

However, the guns were a bit lackluster this time around. The entire game franchise is known for its guns, and I feel this game didn't quite deliver. There were a few interesting ones, such as the one that shoots tornadoes, and the gun that is actually not a gun because its more of a robot companion who loves murder, but the other guns are less inspired, though varied enough to keep things interesting. There are also about three different ways to level up each gun, which struck me as a bit superfluous.

In fact, the whole leveling process seemed unnecessary. You level up at the exact same rate as your enemies, the increased amount of bolts and RARITANIUM (the moneys of the game) you get as the game goes on directly corresponds with the cost of new guns, and what this adds up to is exactly the same amount of difficulty at any point of the game, that difficulty being 'aggressively easy'. Maybe that's the point; if your guns get stronger faster than the enemies do, the game becomes too easy, and if they level up slower, then there's no satisfaction gained from higher levels. But it felt as if the folks at Insomniac only implemented the level system for the sake of BIG NUMBERS, because BIG NUMBERS mean MORE FUN, in what experts call The Reverse Mathematics Theorem.

The most fun.

But fuck that stuff. The ridiculous Dorsket and Crank universe is worth ignoring what really amounts to minor gripes. I had quick, easy fun* that kept me occupied for a good few days (all the way up until my psss3 snapped in two and became a toaster), but since it was only a few days, it's worth a rent, or at least a buy that costs as much as renting it.

A PS3?!

Glosket and Chank gets 1 “I really thought Lombaxes were real”s out of 1.

*That's what she said.

inFamous - one out of one - Good or Blog First Edition Special Feature!

inFamous – 1/1 - Good or Blog First Edition Special Feature!

Sucker Punch’s electric Spiderman sandbox game, inFamous, is one of polarity (pun totally intended). Remaining firmly in the cartoon realm, the creators of Sly Cooper have departed quite nicely from their cell shaded thief and into the equally outlandish world of comic book superheroes. The story, structure, progression, and gameplay are all classic Sly, with an interesting twist of next-gen grit.

It means more than famous

However, unlike its cartoony predecessor, inFamous includes one of this generation’s banes of my existence: the extraneous morality system. Initially it doesn’t make much sense, you’re the hero of the story, why would you pick up a game where you play as a hero and willfully choose the “Evil” (it’s called that in the game) path? Much has already been said about the whole industry-wide debacle, but I’m happy to say inFamous actually utilizes the concept rather well occasionally, which inspired me to do a Good or Blog First Edition Special Feature! Inspired by sparky protagonist Cole MacGrath’s bipolar journey, this reviewer will provide you with the good AND the bad here. I bet you are practically catatonic with excitement.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks – one out of one

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks – 1/1

Zelda games have always occupied a strange spot in my gaming tapestry. I’m not the gigantic super fan with a triforce tattoo and an intimate knowledge of the split timeline, but I’ve played most of the series and enjoyed nearly every single one (though Twilight Princess was a spot of ‘ehhh’). Needless to say, I played Phantom Hourglass, was moderately impressed, and halfheartedly looked forward to the latest entry in the series: The Title Written at the Top of this Post.

First of all, the most important thing to understand here, I think, is this: I was dedicated, absolutely dedicated, to giving this game a zero when I was about halfway through it. It starts strong enough to be sure. There’s a promising story injected with a nifty little train travel mechanic and Princess Zelda is a ghost! And she travels with you! Isn’t she just so kawaii (editor’s note: kawaii means ‘cute’)? 

D'awww

Silent Hill 2 - one out of one - Henry Arrambide

Silent Hill 2 – 1/1 – Henry Arrambide

The fact that a SH3 review preceded this is merely coincidence.

              When you set out to make something ‘mature’, you must be careful. Trying to prove that games are ‘mature’ may lead to something like Manhunt, where ‘maturity’ is just a coverall term for violence, cartoonish gore, or sexual deviancy. I find that striving to make something ‘mature’ in those oh so useful selling points comes off as insulting; it’s as if the creator is saying that the gaming populace is immature, unable to appreciate games properly, and so tits and violence must be added (not that cartoonish excess is a bad thing when handled correctly). You get so caught up in trying to make something ‘mature’ that you forget the other goals entirely.

              Silent Hill 2 understands this. The game is tasteful with its violence; blood and gore don’t spew forth with every gunshot and whack, but are effectively used when needed. It tells a simple yet twisted story, and expects you to pick up the pieces and determine the truth. There is no barrage of cutscenes and extended hours of dialogue. What exists are quick snippets, short lines dropped by characters as lost in the world as you are. No one knows what the hell is going on, not even the game in some cases. Why should there be an NPC telling you up to date plot points? (Answer: because the developers don’t think the gamer is paying attention; or the game is mechanically weak and hard to understand) You remember things, you take notes, and you draw conclusions. Some things you forget accidentally. Sometimes you want to forget the terrifying crap you just went through – the atmosphere works at creating this ever-looming fear that either motivates you or scares you into never wanting to play. You make implications based on your surroundings to figure out what happened where. In short, the game asks you to participate, not just listen, to the story; the game is aware that you are playing it, and so it wants to utilize that dimension. There is only as much meaning behind your actions as you interpret there to be, sure – but the game was made with the idea in mind that your actions in some way affect things on a deeper level. The game asks for you to be mature – not to play, because anyone can play, but to solve the deeper problems in James Sunderland’s life and get a full experience from the game. Interactive entertainment – you aren’t just moving the avatar from plot point A to plot point B and being info-dumped. That kind of audience respect is why Silent Hill 2 is mature.

AOOFAD and Silent Hill 3 Exciting Explosion Review

AOOFAD and Silent Hill 3 Exciting Explosion Review

Yeah this took about five minutes to whip up.

There are two things that make good video games. Likewise, good video games are good because of the same two things: atmosphere and mechanics. Without these two elements a game is either bad, or not a game in my opinion. Things like story can be found in a book, graphics in movies or television, but mechanics and atmosphere are unique to the interactive medium.

That’s not to say a good game can’t have a good story, or a bad game has it’s graphics to blame. I love the Phoenix Wright games for their story, and I love seeing a painstakingly rendered historic city stretch out before me in Assassin’s Creed. But these are just contributions to a whole, facets that catch the light and bend it towards the center of something that’s worth seeing or isn’t. That’s what we’re all about here, right?

Mechanics and atmosphere. Games like Tetris are good because of their mechanics, games like Jet Set Radio are good because of their atmosphere (it’s basically a barebones Tony Hawk clone made awesome by style and FUNK). Games like the Fallout series are good because of their synthesis of the two elements. The atmosphere influences the gameplay and vice-versa. I mean, you wouldn’t scrounge and pick up every little piece of scrap and ammunition unless it was the apocalypse, right? The point is, the two elements can be present alone or together, and with that said I arrive at the review proper.

All of Our Friends are Dead. Yeah.

All of Our Friends Are Dead(amalgam really) - one out of one - Henry Arrambide

All of our friends are dead. – 1/1 – Henry Arrambide

We play, we push, we want to finish the game. We kill what’s thrown at us, chase whatever goals are fed to us no matter how little sense they make. Use what mechanics are given to us, because they’re all that we have within the game, all that we can do to survive, push forth, make sense of things. It’s satisfying, destroying whatever stands between us and our end – every little pop or crumble as our foes burst into blood and fail before us – we did that, we accomplished that. Sure, it was only in the context of this game, only inevitable considering there is no ultimate game over pushing us back to the start – all we can do is move forward. The game wants us to - we can choose to just stop, but it's too damn appealing. We want to beat and conquer this…thing before us, and in the end what does that even mean? You still have your real world debts and duties at the end of the day. I highly doubt having all the achievements in Modern Warfare 2 will somehow fix that. The question that it boils down to is why? Why do we play? Not just why do we play All of our friends are dead, but games in general. That's something only the individual can answer.

Easy to learn, tricky to master, pickup and playable – I think the best games aren’t the ones that ask you to take fifty hours of your time and invest in their intense dictionary of terms and rules. WRPG’s suffer the most from this, feeling to me as if they lack any real structure outside their shell of DnD derivatives. That’s another rant. A game should be accessible from the start, laying out the core rules in the first ten minutes or so, and then allowing the player to work from there. Length shouldn’t be an issue – granted that there can be games which cut themselves short and length is a glaring problem – but in the big picture, a 6 to 10 hour game shouldn’t be a problem when executed well. You can comeback with your knowledge of the rules, apply them better, have fun. Speed running, or just a lazy afternoon; if done well a great game can be played for almost ever. Mega Man and Contra still hold water today; Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest (not counting the fabulous remakes which change the rules and make the games playable again), not so much. There has to be a lasting friction - a feeling that you, the player, are actually doing something within the game world.

In a way, I guess this is going to turn into a small review of Spiderman: Web of Shadows, a game I was forcing myself through when a friend recommended All of our friends are dead. Web of Shadows avoided the flaw of investment – it doesn’t ask the player to hold out and follow its rules. Spidey is given a weight to his controls that makes you feel like you’re slinging a person through the air – each swing and shot has a momentum to it that’s just right. The game isn’t about mashing the swinging and the jumping, but controlling it, limiting it and using it properly. The character is a vehicle, a real superhuman machine. Mission accomplished. For all intents and purposes – do not play Web of Shadows. That momentum is wasted by a game that asks you to use that avatar to follow markers from point A to point B, collect 2000+ tokens littering the land, fight with a needlessly complex albeit fun combat system – through the same three mission types a million times over for ten hours too long. All in the most awkward graphical detail. You will be seduced by Spidey and then tricked into doing his chores. Web of Shadows was a game so in tune with its physics and how the player interacted with their avatar – yet totally unaware of how to make the avatar interact with the world. Mario runs and jumps, so let’s place him in an environment where the floor is glass which will shatter at any small application of pressure – now walk twenty miles to the right without making even a crack in that damn glass. I guess it had something to do with the development team, or the fact that it was under the Marvel license. Someone cared about that game in the start before every other interest vested in the game mandated that it had to contain Wolverine and be finished at a certain date - so Wolverine was awkwardly thrown in, and the missions, rather than well structured, became filler and padding that added length to the game. 

There’s that connection between the player and the avatar, the avatar and the game-world, and thus the player and the game-world, which is so rarely utilized in gaming. There’s multiple levels to work with that could really be used to effectively tell a tale in ways no other medium could – and that’s what the best games do. Not push us through cinematic choke points of text and dialogue so burdened with references to outside works of philosophy or literature which render personal interpretation null – all while making us play an entirely different game between cutscenes in which the mechanics of the game are totally divorced from otherwise in-universe rules. No, you want what the player does to feel like it has some weight in the world, make the player question not only what his avatar is doing, but why he is doing those actions with his avatar.

All of our friends are dead is by no means the best game ever, but it is a damn fine exercise in these mechanics. Pick it up, learn the rules, execute everything. Wonder what it all means. The game wants you to think about it – so get to it. Give it a shot.

En ruin twist and tumble, forget the smell of home

No soil beneath our footsteps, no marrow in the bones

Listen at us will you? Share with us your head

Do hide behind the iris...as all of our friends are dead.

New Super Mario Bros - zero out of one - Henry Arrambide

New Super Mario Bros. - 0/1- Henry Arrambide

A Nintendo title for the Nintendo DS

          ‘Platformer’ is a retroactive name for the genre which came about with the jump to 3D. Back in the day Mario, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, and all those bad movie adaptations such as Batman and Terminator – those all fell under that vague hat of Action/Adventure. The fact that floating platforms existed within the game was secondary to the design, a means to an end. Going back to the games, you see that the levels were structured not around the sole fact that they contained platforms – Castlevania the best at this – but the levels were structured as to lead you into the next climatic piece of the game. This doesn’t mean the level design was bad; eight-bit display limitations call for extreme attention to detail to ensure the player can tell where they should be going. What I’m getting at is that the game had a purpose to which everything served – you were storming a castle fighting horror icons, so the structure of the levels had to reflect the interiors of a castle, had to make sense spatially, and had to entertain. Every piece had its purpose; no platforms placed for the sake of the game being a “platformer”. Not only do they make sense, but they fit together perfectly, giving you a Dracula’s Castle which is architecturally sound.

Notice that the levels actually correspond to the map you're given in game, despite the fact that you never zoom out and see the castle in total. The player never needed to know if the levels didn't match up.
This was done years before the internet and emulation allowed fans to map it out and appreciate it. Additionally, towards the end of level 3 you can see the keep in the distance, which corresponds perfectly
with the actual keep level's placement. Castlevania's architecture had purpose to it's design, whether you realized it or not. (Click to view this in all its majesty)

            Mario was not about fighting Dracula. Mario wasn’t confined to a castle. The stages in Super Mario Bros were the purpose of the game, much like Dracula and Medusa were the purpose of Castlevania. There’s a certain visual language at play in Super Mario Bros. When you start, you have no clue what you’re doing, no text box displaying a “PRESS D-PAD RIGHT”. You mess with your two buttons and d-pad, Mario jumps and moves. Alright! The screen scrolls, you can’t go back. Suddenly an ugly little brown guy is moving left, towards you. He is opposition, obviously working against your flow. You jump over him, maybe hit one of those bricks. A mushroom comes up, you snatch it, get bigger. You keep moving right, jumping over things – and there’s the game. For the rest of the game the jumps get narrower, the enemies come in higher numbers, and you meet a lizard spitting fire left – but you’re always jumping, moving to the right, using those same principals set up in stage one. The levels simply grow longer, feature more pits and platforms, but all they ever do is ask for you to get better at jumping and moving to the right. The purpose of the game is to push you through harder and harder jumps, and so the levels are built with that in mind. There wasn’t a cult of Mario at the time, so the game wasn’t about wacky Bowser plots and crazy goomba characters – it was the challenge of jumping and running, getting farther and farther into the mushroom kingdom.

             New Super Mario Bros is none of this. New Super Mario Bros is a game where the purpose of the stages is to “Do what Mario does.” It’s not making a game that’s particularly fun or challenging, but creating a game where you get to remember all those old days as a kid where you played Mario games on your NES. Let us look at World 1. The first level takes you through a few jumps and gives you a mushroom. Some coins serve as a visual aid so you know where to jump, even though where to jump is painstakingly obvious. It’s alright, it’s the first level, this abundance of coins is just for tutorial reasons – I hope. You notice that the goombas and turtles are sort of placed haphazardly, they move as if they aren’t even sure they should be there. Then you get a giant mushroom. Not a secret, not something you had to earn – it just pops out of one of those boxes you’ve been hitting. You turn EXTRA HUGE and then suddenly, you’re stomping through the level. Fuck design principals, you can just charge through everything, and then BAM, you’re rewarded with free lives.

             That’s New Super Mario Bros. The design isn’t random and lazy, but made because it’s “What Mario Does.” Every level is loaded with coins and mushrooms and big mushrooms and big coins not because they are needed, not because the levels get harder, but because “What Mario Does” is jump on bricks, collect coins, and get power ups. “What Mario Does” is navigate worlds and fight Bowser in castles, so why don’t we place the same world map multiple times over with slight variations to give the player a sense of choice? It’s the illusion of choice. “What Mario Does” is find secret power ups, so let’s give the player a mega mushroom that allows him to skip over the actual jumping, enemy dodging, and coin collecting. To top it off, “What Mario Does” is collect free lives, so let’s give the Mega Mario Rampage a bonus.

            It’s all artificial. The levels aren’t random and lazy, but made because Mario has a cool wall jump, so let’s force an obvious wall jump section, complete with coins and all to highlight that the passage is climbable. Did you grab that free life in the first level of Super Mario Bros because you saw it there on your first play, or was it a secret your older brother showed you? In New Super Mario Bros, you may not collect every big coin because they get tiring, but you will know how to get them. Small hole leads to it, you passed a small mushroom a few blocks back. It’s forced design, where rather than finding out nifty little secrets as you play two or three times, the game drags them forward and makes sure you know they’re there. No subtlety, no respect for the audience.

              Audience respect is what I believe many games boil down to. Good games expect you to learn, expect you to have some sort of intelligence and enthusiasm (hell, you wanted to play the game didn’t you?). Good games aren’t telling you how to jump or swim five hours in (sometimes after the water world has been cleared entirely); they're about giving the player a set of skills and asking the player to apply said skills. I believe that this is the major flaw with New Super Mario Bros. From the first stage to the last, there are coins littering the land, power ups on every screen, mushroom houses around every corner, and free lives are given away for simply breathing. There’s that soft Mario music remix playing through every stage. You get bounced into your first red coin collecting ring, and every other ring is just as obvious. The game doesn’t expect you to know anything ever, it just keeps feeding you lives and coins and super mushrooms because it’s afraid of getting hard, of asking something out of you. Sure the last world does have some semblance of difficulty, but once again it’s because that’s what NES games did. They give you a fucking platform for the first Bowser fight so that you can jump over him. They give you a platform because it might be too hard for the player to comprehend jumping over the firebeast and hitting the bigass switch behind him. Talk about kid gloves.

Nintendo doesn't think you can handle this one.

           Remember finding the secret warp zone because you put two and two together and realized you could climb up on top of the underground level? Skipping worlds was a fun thing to discover; it was also a useful strategy on shortening the route to the end – play some clever jumping games and the game rewarded you. Well…now there’s two worlds you skip clear over. They aren’t hidden worlds that the game doesn’t tell you about and hope you discover – that would require level design which encouraged exploration and independent thought. The game shows you on the bottom screen, plain as day, that you are skipping worlds. Like the big coin tracker and world maps, the game wants you to know you’re missing out – “Hey” it asks “stick around, sweep around every corner. I PROMISE there’s a secret or two here. SEE, LOOK! I’M HIDING STUFF!” It yells out to that little OCD gamer in us, hopes it can reach him and make us play the game for the sake of 100% completion – not because it’s fun or engaging, but because it’s there. This is what games do, right? Give you all kinds of secrets to explore? With NSMB's philosophy - those warp zones in Super Mario Bros or nifty flute chest in Super Mario Bros 3 would have signs pointing straight towards them. What fun would that be?

            There's a certain appeal of Mario games being so simple yet hiding so many nice little secrets around the edges. As I mentioned before, the first hidden free life in Super Mario Bros is a common secret known to most people who've ever touched a Mario game. The simplistic controls allow people to pick up, play, and get hooked. The little secrets in turn have created a fun little way for Mario players to socialize and trade secrets in the same way the original Legend of Zelda did. Pick up and play Super Mario Bros 3 sometime with a friend, the game was made for co-op. Notice every little mushroom house trick and warp whistle discovery - those little secrets that have accumulated over the years. The games themselves are short, sweet, and everyone knows Worlds 6,7, and 8 are royal pains - but sharing strategies and helping others is sort of a subculture that has grown out of the old Super Mario Bros games (hell, even Mario 64 holds water in this respect). With the designs of NSMB, there is no room for any of that - the game is too preoccupied with making sure the player is running through the motions, kicking shells and stomping goombas. All secrets are forced and straightfoward - there is no swimming under the ships in the eighth world or strategically saving your P-Wings and Clouds - when you get the mega mushroom, use it and stomp through everything - the designs weren't important enough to the developer in the first place, hence the game giving you the mega mushroom. Jumping couldn't possibly be fun - tearing shit up (get this: as Mario!) is what gamers want.

What’s the point? I’m not one to say you’re wasting your life on games, but when it comes to gaming, I expect a challenge. Not a mind numbing Master Ninja challenge, but I expect the game to ask something out of me. I expect some sort of substance. Without any kind of exercise in thought or skill, what’s left is masturbation, pressing one or two buttons as the game plays itself. I don’t know why Nintendo decided everyone deserves to beat their games when we know Mario saves the princess (modern Castlevanias suffer a similar problem - we retread cubicles collecting the stock powerups because god dammit, we just HAVE to kill Dracula - but that's for another review). The direct stories aren’t intriguing, the games are designed to be easily beatable, and so there’s no substance to the game. Why play the game? I understand it’s a handheld title, but does that really merit the excuse of “I can play it in my free time”? Time to sound like a total dick - aren’t there better things to do? If your defense is “It’s a good game to play five minutes at a time while waiting for the dentist”, then can you really take that argument and expand it into “Hey, it’s a good game” outside the context of being extremely bored and needing time to kill?

             In one of the earlier levels in the game, you stomp and turtle and get his shell. Literally two blocks over is a tower of breakable bricks which has an obvious “KICK SHELL HERE” gap. So you kick the shell there because that’s what Mario does. You proceed to stand there as you watch the shell run its pre-determined path. At the end of this whole demo of the game playing itself, you are rewarded with a free life and a gazillion points. This, in short, is what New Super Mario Bros is. It’s a game which doesn’t want to ask anything of the player, just simply reach out and say “Hey, remember how cool those old Mario games were?”

Why is there still points system anyway? Capcom found those superfluous and got rid of the points system after the first Mega Man.
Nintendo dropped them with the 3D jump. So why were they brought back for this game? Oh yeah…because that’s what Mario did.

Demon's Souls - one out of one

By: Sergio

Game: Demon's Souls

Score: one out of one

I seem to always pick the worst games to look forward to.

It happened with Kane & Lynch: Dead Men when someone described the story as being a pair of characters trying to fix their increasingly wrecked lives, but with guns. I bought it, beat it in two days on the hardest difficulty and questioned why the developers decided that one billion zillion expletives could in no way be seen as being over the top or less than subtle. It happened again with Alone in the Dark when I saw a trailer with the main character hanging from a burning building and throwing McGuyver'd cans of explosions. That game was universally panned for being broken and nigh unplayable. And it happened AGAIN with Persona 4, which I begrudgingly sunk nearly 100 hours into after deciding pretty early on that the creators obviously put more effort into MO-AY than character development and game design principles.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it happened again. It happened before I even owned a PS3, when I saw a trailer for this game. It was strange because it seemed like such a no-brainer for a video game. Why hasn't anyone cornered the guy-in-knight-armor-fighting-demons-in-macabre-medieval-setting genre yet? It's like Zelda meets Ninja Gaiden! I waited breathlessly for a North American launch date, planning to import it first, buy a PS3 second. I wanted this game that bad.

I almost learned another language for this.

For those unfamiliar with the game, it takes place in a fantastic Medieval Dark Fantasy setting (think Berserk and you're close) where you are just a stranger to the strange land of Boletaria, a nation shrouded in evil fog that has propagated demons and wickedness and heralds the end of the world by way of the Old One, the greatest demon to ever demon around the block. The main task in the game is killing all the demons and liberating Boletaria of it's Silent Hill sickness. But beyond that there isn't really a "plot". You take on sections of the game, accessed from the hub-like Nexus, at your choice and leisure with no guiding hand or urgency. Despite this, the game is absolutely steeped in backstory. There are enough gods and demons and fantastical names thrown around to rival Tolkien, and it's all fed to you piece by piece if you pursue it.

And now that Atlus has graciously brought the disc to America all the mainstream games media can talk about is its difficulty. That is, parroting the fact that this game is motherfucking hard. While it isn't to me the main appeal of the game, it's a cool aspect and there is certainly something that needs to be said about the difficulty.

Every gamer has their paradigm perfect game by which all others are judged, and mine is Ninja Gaiden Black for the original XBOX. The creator of the series, Tomonobu Itagaki once called God of War a half-assed game because it's reliance on quick-time events (it might've been Heavenly Sword actually, but no one remembers that game, so whatever). It rips you out of the experience and you're no longer this person fighting demons or stabbing harpies or what have you. You're suddenly just the sap holding the controller.

Demon's Souls never does this to you. You are this guy (or girl) in this suit of armor (or lack thereof if you're a badass) at all times. Every step and slash, dodge and sidestep, it is all you. Nearly any creature in the entire game is very capable of killing your stupid head off, almost regardless of level. But from your modest set of skills and tools you have at the beginning, you are completely on your own to grow into someone better. You will likely die along the way. You will likely die many times, and yes this means losing all your progress since your last visit to the Nexus(if you screw up really badly). But if you die you aren't blocking right, or you aren't attacking at the right time. You die because you haven't been growing, because you haven't been learning.

Education.

Which brings me to another point. Last year gamers balked at the new Prince of Persia game because it was too easy since you never “die”. Or rather, it was death without consequences. Demon's Souls is a similar scenario, you may die but you can easily get all your stuff back and be on your merry way, its just a matter of making it to where you died and recovering your bloodstain. If you die a second time (read: screw up really badly) well the previous bloodstain disappears and... there's your consequences! Apparently this minor alteration is the difference between easy casual game for babies, and the hardest motherfucking game you will play this year.

But the game really isn't as hard as everyone has made it out to be. You dodge when you have to, slash when it's wise, maybe cast a spell. The game piles on healing items and you can find weapons that suit you by world jumping pretty easily. The game is essentially an action-RPG though, a lot like if Dragon Quest had beat-'em-up style combat and the party was only one member, so it's easy to see why someone would choose a knight class, buff strength stats, run headfirst into every challenge, die, and call the game hard. This is where the game gets really cool though.

See, Demon's Souls was made to be withholding and secretive. As a result it is this beautiful symphony of secrets and lies. The online component lets you collaborate a little with fellow warriors through a messaging system, but if you have someone else playing the game or a good forum to discuss on, then the game truly opens up. It's a game made for those kids (or, ahem, totally mature adults like myself) that play all night and run to school the next day to tell everyone on the blacktop how they beat this one boss, or where they found this one sword. Characters get matched against characters, where who stacked their stats and what they're equipping for what. It's just a really great game where possibility fosters creativity, not by means of a blank canvas like, say, Little Big Planet, but by necessity. You get creative because you want to kill skeletons better, or avoid getting stabbed through the chest by gooey phalanx creatures.

All of these elements, the story, the vulnerability, and the synchronization you begin to feel with your character all come together really well when you're in the thick of gameplay, roaming a castle or underground mine. This is even further compounded by something that took me a while to notice, there is almost no music. It seems insane, I mean, there's even a soundtrack released with the game, but while you creep slowly through a prison level listening for the bells that herald the mindflayers you're too preoccupied with being terrified to notice. The danger is somehow amplified through the tension.

When Shadow of the Colossus meets YOUR NIGHTMARES.

Demon's Souls is very stoic. It is content with what it does, and this makes it hard to reprimand any single point because everything that seems like a flaw, could also have been done intentionally. Like the lack of a true pause. You press start, your inventory and stats appear, but you can still run around and be killed. I can see people screaming bloody murder over this. How DARE a modern game lack a pause button to accommodate my busy schedule!? Well, it makes sure your on your toes, and that you think about your equipment constantly. It's there for a reason. It's all there for a reason, and that reason is absolutely precious when people were yelling about how Prince of Persia was way too easy because it never jarringly ripped you out of the driver's seat (never mind the insane abundance of QTEs).

Mega Man X2 - one out of one - Henry Arrambide

Mega Man X2 – 1/1 – Henry Arrambide

A Capcom title for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

I know you’re out there - people who play videogames because they think they’re actually fun. Don’t be afraid. It’s not a bad thing. I see it all the time. You go on a forum or some comment section or something like that, and you can see the divide. You see, for some reason there is, as with almost any collective, a breed of gamer out there who doesn’t enjoy games. I realize this is a bad way to start; alienate the readers, come off as a jackass. But go back to those forums you crawled from. Take a look. Has anyone brought up the ‘games as art’ argument? Someone talking about “depth” or “story” and how Game A is better than Game B or how Game C should be heralded as Product D? Look at that for a moment. Read their reasoning. Ask yourself does this person know what the hell they are talking about? Why aren’t they playing games and discussing games?

As far as I can recall, it started around the PSX era. Final Fantasy 7 and Xenogears. Grand sweeping pre-rendered cut-scenes and dialogue boxes delivered stories of sword wielders and mech pilots going on adventures and facing ultimate evil. These games were mature. These games were deep. Never mind the fact that FF7 was stereotypical or that Xenogears was burdened with so much high school philosophical referencing that rendering individual personal interpretation was impossible. “Artistic Gaming” was here. I’m sure you’ve seen people come into Book and Lit boards asking for books as “deep” or “compelling” as Game A or Game B. You have to be careful with these types, recommending them something that plays with subtext or personal interpretation and metaphor too much will have them resorting to the same complaints they have with games like Silent Hill 2 or Shadow of the Colossus: It’s boring. It’s got no story. You do nothing.

As far as I can tell, this stems from the fact that there are people out there who play games not because they are fun, but because it’s a subculture, a group they can fall back on, some way they can socialize. They think what they’re doing is somewhat childish, and yearn for some kind of ‘maturation’ of the genre into who knows what. Yes, insult the masses why don’t I?

As far as gaming and art are concerned, I’ve always believed one thing: do what only your medium can deliver, and excel at it. That is when you know a game is excellent, or possibly that term that can throw any message board into a fit of rage: artistic. Possibly.

Mega Man has been around since the eight bit days, spawning hundreds of sequels, spinoffs, and guest appearances. Much like any other character, he has been forced to evolve and move along with the times. This has brought us recent titles such as the Mega Man Zero series and the Mega Man ZX series. Oddly enough, the Zero series was originally made as a ‘return to roots’ project. But they filled it with Cyber Elf collectibles, the patented Capcom ranking system, and odd ways of upgrading and collecting power ups which demanded you bend over backwards and perform feats of strength for the game. All bloat.

The Mega Man ‘formula’ is moving right while shooting anything that is going left. You could make a case that “listening to badass midi’s and blasting away cartoonish enemies” should also count somewhere in there. Mega Man X2 is the Mega Man formula perfected. It is everything that was known about making a Mega Man game at that point in time dumped into a single cart. Mega Man 7 was a step back to tradition for the sake of the fans, Mega Man X3 was a step into overindulgence and too many ideas for the sake of “advancing the series", and its predecessor was still setting up the ground rules and not having enough fun.

Let’s fire up Mega Man X2. It’s nighttime. The sky is a rich purple, bright green lasers are flying in from the right side of the screen. In from the left speeds Mega Man and the Green Biker Dude, on future motorcycles. Who needs plot or exposition? In the first twenty seconds of the game, the only time you aren’t controlling Mega Man, it is the stuff of Saturday Morning Cartoons. Speed and suspense. Your green biker companion is shot, going out in a spectacular 16-bit explosion. Mega Man jumps off his bike as it crashes into an enemy, coming to a standstill. Knowing you’re watching all this unfold to a hyperactive midi, the game simply flashes READY. You sure as hell are. No long text dumps or pre-rendered scenes – just visual language.

With it’s opening cinematic, the only one for the rest of the game until you fell the final boss, everything has been setup. Move to the right quickly as possible or you may end up like your green biker friend. Objects coming at you can hurt you. Know when to jump. The only thing not in the intro to appear after the READY alert is simply a health bar. Easy enough, no instructions needed on how to use it. You get hit, it goes down. From here on out, kill everything. The music will keep you pumped and the cartoonish graphical presentation will make everything easy to see.

Not that the game is a straight line you must keep going right on. You can take your time, explore, blast away. It may or may not help. If you want to speed through, that’s fine too. This isn’t Mega Man Zero, where that S Rank will be needed to unlock the best power ups. The game is about fun, not meeting some arbitrary standard. The game does not lose when the player wins. But be warned, just because you can choose whatever boss you want doesn’t mean the game is going to hold your hand – the game is fair with the player, but it isn’t going to hold back being hard if you actively go after the evil looking spike riddled alligator or mean looking fire boss. Slow down and explore, learn strategies, find power ups, AND THEN go fight the meanest looking dude in the room.

Go ahead. Pick the Gator first. I fucking dare you.

There’s no Capcom ranking system which will prevent you from getting the best equipment because you failed to complete the game in ten minutes. Why would a developer want to punish players for wanting to explore?

Exploring can yield you health upgrades or body part upgrades, but nothing essential to beating the game (in theory, if you’re a sadist). That is all up to you, the player to decide, adding a sliding scale of difficulty to the game, once again some sense of fairness. Power-ups aren’t esoteric in their concealment, half lay out in the open, just out of reach. The other half hide just off the trail, hidden on a side-path requiring maybe a little more out of the player. They can make the game easier if you are having trouble. They are not what later X games would bring to the table. There is one set of armor. Eight health expansions if needed. That is all. Unlike what X3 did with a suit, then upgrades to that suit, then a golden upgrade to that suit but only if you didn’t get the previous upgrades. This is simple (don’t get me started on X5 or 6’s “Here’s a suit now, there’s three more suits hidden in the stages, some are time sensitive and you only have one opportunity to find them” mentality). Hell, you might not even need these upgrades (once again, X6 had among its multiple suits the Shadow Armor, a ninja armor which was required to beat the second or third to last level – take THAT players).

There are no endless seas of spikes or pixel perfect jumping sections. Every level plays with the “Go right, shoot enemies” formula a little. One level has various weather effects that change the way enemies fight or how you can move. Another level places you on a motorcycle from the opening, only you’re in control now. You can choose not to use it at all. I think one of the best levels is a junkyard where these Ceiling bound magnets allow you to jump and float around. Parasitic robot bugs fill the level; there is a nice midboss setup showing you what they are capable of. When you encounter them minus the host, you are good food for them. They don’t do copious amounts of damage, they just stop and control you for a minute or so. They could theoretically run you into enemies and the like, but the only certainty is that they will eat up time. They are enemies of the impatient. Stop, breathe, beat them. There is no ranking system here, the game won’t punish you for getting hit, because getting hit is already punishment enough. You don’t have to die from your mistakes every time, just learn from them. You will have to learn, even with a fully powered Mega Man.

The game isn’t a walk in the park. You will die. You will have to learn boss strategies. But they never turn into mind numbing puzzles with abstract solutions. It’s all visual language – you have a gun, keep shooting about until you find what works. Go right, shoot enemies. Sometimes you have to shoot more than once. Boss’s visually react to the proper weakness. The game is consistent with this method. You never have the genre switch up on you – things stay action/platformer, never are you suddenly playing a racing game or intricate puzzle game (once again, later era X games began to implement puzzle levels and racing levels for the sake of ‘advancement’ or ‘variety’, even though by this time the X series had become more of a cash grabbing ritual). It’s clean, it’s fast, it’s simple. Blow shit up. If it were a movie, book, or cartoon, it would be mindless, maybe boring, action. As a videogame, it is crunch, flow, and pure fun.

Never forget.

Brutal Legend - one out of one - Henry Arrambide

By: Henry Arrambide

The world of heavy metal and what is and isn’t metal and who is true and what is metal and false and kvlt yadda yadda yadda is just too complicated. Screw that whole debate. So when it comes to talking about Brutal Legend, let’s not focus on what’s in the soundtrack and whether or not it’s trve metal or false or that Jack Black annoys you or Dio was kicked out and replaced by Tim Curry. This is a goddamn game, play it.

Having that cleared up, Brutal Legend does the Heavy Metal shtick justice. You don’t get a super tongue in cheek parody of metal music and culture, or a super serious take. The story actually grabs you, takes you for a ride, has fun, and then it’s over. The music is placed tastefully, and it pulls you in. Whether you think Cradle of Filth and Quiet Riot are poser bands doesn’t matter, they fit the atmosphere. The voice acting is excellent, the characters are animated with expressions that actually emote – no uncanny valley here, the game definitely had some care put into it.

Now, for what you can actually control. You play for the first oh, 10%-15% of the game alone, hacking around, fighting Spider Queens and Big Fisted bosses. It’s hack and slash, no complicated combo’s or real difficulty curve. Fun stuff, fighting the Metal Queen, riding Razor Boars, listening to Brocas Helm, cutting up Cultists with your axe. Then the RTS elements kick in. You get a stage, you harvest fans, you build units, and then you destroy the enemy stage. Every RTS battle is like this. They are quite epic, being the big setpieces that move the story – this is where Brutal Legend’s soundtrack really shines. Try not to storm your way to victory as Rob Halford wails about how you have one shot at glory. Try not saving the world from the Painkiller. Throughout the campaign you acquire new units with their own special moves, team ups (you can land in the battlefield and tag team enemies with different units, very fun), and costs, and the campaign forces you into using each one at least once. The actual battles are quite fun, your character sprouts wings, flies over the fields making commands in a setting similar to a traditional RTS, and then you get to drop down into battle and join your troops. This is the meat of the game, and it’s a good “My First RTS” type affair. Commanding armies of headbangers as you survey the lands on demon wings and lead the horde to victory, pretty metal. Not to mention when you drop in, you’re probably going to land and pull off a kick ass solo in the heat of battle to rally the troops and power your army before joining your brethren in battle against the demons of hell. It’s fun, and the RTS stuff never gets tiring. Makes for good multiplayer.

The problem with Brutal Legend is, that’s about it.

The non-RTS missions basically serve as learning the new units. At the start of the game, you storm mines and free headbangers. They become the first unit you can purchase. Next non-RTS mission, you help harvest Razorfire Boars, creating the Razor Girl unit. These kinds of missions are mixed in with the RTS battles, all the way to the end. Literally, before the final RTS mission gauntlet, you recruit the final unit in your arsenal. I wish that the game had at least three or four more battles where you were free to reign and defeat the enemy however you wished – but usually, you end up with RTS missions where the latest member of your army tends to be key for victory.

If all you do is the campaign, be ready for a fun as hell five or six hours. Sure, the game gives you sidequests to do between missions, but there’s only five or so types of quests, repeated twenty times over. Fun at first, tiring later. You can lead a small squad to victory in an ambush (never lasting more than two minutes max – not even enough time for the music to get good), you can get on rails and defend a key hill or road on the world (once again, boiling down to taking out a small enemy squad lasting only two or three minutes), you can help a Mortar defend a key point – very familiar sounding, isn’t it? Aside from those quests, there’s always hunting wildlife (boiling down to Run Over Fifteen of Animal X, Ten Animal Y, and so on), and Racing. The races only happen four or five times, one accompanying each area of the map – it stays fun and tasteful, unlike the others which sprout up like weeds – 5 or more per area.

Racing also does something helpful – shows you the map. You see, outside of the main plotline, there are two major zones of the map you never explore, and the other three zones you sort of just drive through – the game gives you a vehicle at the beginning, a summon vehicle solo quickly after, and expects you to just drive from point A to point B. The main campaign is fun, engaging, and plotted really well – too well. There never is a time when it feels appropriate to go do sidequests without breaking the pace of the game. And when you do go questing, it’s just the same repetitive missions you’ve been playing from the start of the game. Racing at least shows you around, reminds you there’s cool stuff in the world.

The game world is littered with monuments, bound serpent statues, legends of yore, hidden music, and jumps, all of which add so much to the game. Seeing the monuments and the legends adds a whole lot more backstory to the world, it’s just a shame that the game never makes you stumble upon one. The jumps are just fun distractions and the hidden tracks give you some excellent music to listen to (Mastodon, Emperor, Megadeth…some of the best stuff on the soundtrack is hidden in the most obscure corners of the world), but there’s just so much in the world that you know the developers wanted you to explore. Not just explore to kill time either – every collectible contributes somehow to your character (playing on Brutal would have been a lot tougher if I just plowed through the campaign), and the Legends and Monuments are really something. They wanted you to explore and see the world they created because it really is something to look at – so why fill it with the most repetitive of sidequests and the shortest of campaigns? They even allow you a post-campaign save so you can finish collecting everything, but by that time you don’t need any of it. Sure you can still look for the Legends, Jumps, and Races, but everything else – especially the 120 Bound serpents, loses interests simply because you don’t need it and they weren’t interesting to begin with.

So rent the game, play it, have fun. Don’t rush through it. It’s tempting to do so, seeing as the game IS fun, the story IS engaging, and you can’t find an easy stopping point – but slow down, savor the game, see the sights and learn the legends. Play on Brutal Difficulty, the game isn’t too hard to begin with, but if you do get stuck on Brutal, it encourages you to go out into the world and find serpents, learn solo’s (a particularly awesome Led Zepplin inspired one shows up near the end), and the difficulty will force you to actually use everything in your arsenal rather than facemelting and power sliding everything.

In the world of film critique, the term mise en scène refers to all the aspects of production and how they pull together to create a final product’s atmosphere. For the lack of a pre-existing term in the gaming world, Brutal Legend definitely has mise en scène. It’s just that there happens to be some extra, fun, unused stuff slapped around the edges.

Play it. It will stick with you for sure.